Mechanical tree harvesting equipment has become increasingly more popular in recent years primarily because of the dwindling supply of labor available for manually harvesting trees. One type of mechanical tree harvesting equipment is disclosed in United States Patent No. 3,727,653. The tree harvester disclosed in this patent consists of a turntable supported on a mobile frame with an articulated boom supported on the turntable and having a tree cutting apparatus on the outer end thereof. Because of the high cost of this type of machinery, it is absolutely essential that the machinery be operated at optimum capacity in order to justify the cost.
In harvesting trees with this type of tree harvester or feller buncher, the trees are normally severed and bunched for subsequent pickup by a tree skidder which takes the bunches of trees to a central location for transportation to some other location.
In many instances, it has been found that the feller buncher is unable to bunch a full skidder load of trees which may occur when the trees are small and scattered or when the trees are selectively cut. This forces the skidder to make several time consuming stops to collect enough bunches to operate at optimum capacity. Of course, such an arrangement lowers the overall efficiency of the harvesting operation.